Here’s what we know so far about ‘Avengers: Infinity War’

Captain America: Civil War is one of the highly anticipated movies of the season. The first reactions are already in, and they’re overwhelmingly positive, suggesting the film will be another hit for Marvel. But Civil War is only a stepping stone for the next two Avengers movies, which will fall under the Infinity War title. Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 and Part 2 are going to be released in May 2018 and May 2019, proposing an evolution of the storyline developed so far. And they already sound incredibly exciting, according to a new report.

Talking to the producer, directors, and writers of Infinity War, io9 learned that Part 1 and Part 2 will be entirely different movies even though they’re both going to be shot at the same time. The plots of the two upcoming Avengers movies remain secret, but the movies won’t be two parts of the same story.

“The movies are very very different from one another,” director Anthony Russo said. “It’s not a part one and part two scenario, necessarily. They’re just two different expressions. I think it creates a misconception that we’re shooting them at the same time.”

Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely also confirmed that. “I will agree [the two movies are very different], and that was very important to all of us,” McFeely said.

Infinity War will continue a story the team has been developing for a while now. “For us there’s a through line from Winter Soldier, through Civil War, right to Infinity War,” Anthony Russo added. “In our mind, the storytelling arc moves that way.

“There’s an overarching story that’s going to be told through all four films,” Joe Russo teased. “And I think having the amount of characters we have in [Civil War] certainly prepares us to deal with probably triple the amount of characters in Infinity War.”

Adding more details was Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, who said that much of the groundwork has already been laid, though bits and pieces will also come from Doctor Strange and Thor: Ragnarok.

The writers and directors, meanwhile, spoke with all the directors and writers of the other Phase 3 movies, so that everything lines up for the Infinity War movies.

“We’re on set for Civil War and then as soon as they start shooting we don’t have much to do for the next six hours,” McFeely told io9. “We’d go to the office, read comic books, write down ideas, put everything on the wall and just go ‘These are all the characters we could have.’”

“We sent in literally 60 pages of unrelated ideas,” Markus revealed. “Just like ‘Here’s some stuff that could happen in this insane movie.’ Then we came back from Atlanta, and everyone had a copy of that [document] and they’d circle this, ‘This is cool, this is insane, this is cool, we’re not allowed to do that,’ and from there we’ve pieced it together very slowly. We’re in the middle of it now.”